


Doubt

by define_serenity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Episode Tag, F/M, Fallen Angels, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-04
Updated: 2009-06-04
Packaged: 2018-03-31 17:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/define_serenity/pseuds/define_serenity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a breeze echoing through the landscape, up, and around him, softly carrying the smell of fresh leaves and cinnamon in its wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doubt

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag for 4.22

There’s a breeze echoing through the landscape, up, and around him, softly carrying the smell of fresh leaves and cinnamon in its wake. He stretches out his hand and feels it, the lines, the curves of wind waking everything around him.

“Castiel.” There’s a hand on his shoulder that comes out of nowhere, but he recognizes the touch immediately, and she’s right beside him.

“Anna,” he says, and kneels, the grass underneath his knees crackling with summer. It only takes her one glance, when he looks up, one look into his sorrowful eyes to know, to see, to realize something has happened that would scar any lesser man.

“What did you do?” she accuses him of so many things, because she knows. Because she sees things that sometimes he can’t or won’t see; that’s why she’s the more powerful one.

“I disobeyed,” his voice cracks with sorrow he can’t feel, but has learned to utter.

“God?” She raises an eyebrow and says the name softly, as if whispering it could make her into the hypocrite she maybe deep down knows she is. She removes her hand from his shoulder. “Or Zacharia?”

He shakes his head. “What’s the difference?” 

“The relationship between God and angel is an ambiguous one, Castiel,” she speaks wisely, and he closes his eyes to the sound of her voice. “We are the messengers. We are the agents of fate.” She takes a few steps and then tracks back, so that she’s standing right in front of him, looking down on him. “And yet when God created humanity, he told us, without blinking, that we should bow down by their feet.”

“That’s what we’re told.” He opens his eyes and looks up at her again. He keeps his submissive position, hoping for more wisdom, more words that will wash away his doubt. Or maybe he’s only looking to be forgiven, by the one person who can’t grant him forgiveness. “How can we be sure of anything anymore? Everything, from here to heaven seems corrupted.”

“Do I seem corrupted to you?” Anna asks softly.

Her red hair makes waves on the wind, and it takes a while before he finds the words to answer. “You renounced your faith long ago.” He bows his head, because he can’t look at her when he makes such revelations. “You disobeyed.”

“Only to be followed now by you.” Her hand is on his shoulder again then, and she leans in, forcing him to look back up at her. “There are others, Castiel, who started doubting long ago. It’s them that you must reach out to now. Now that Lucifer is free we are humanity’s only hope.”

“Why me?” he asks, looking for guidance, for revelation within her eyes while he once turned only to God. Her words give him strength, like they always have, but right now, they matter so much more.

“ _Us_ , Castiel.” She squeezes his shoulder and looks him deep in the eyes; there he finds the strength to get up. “And with Sam and Dean by our sides,” she continues. “We can save them. We can restore our father’s kingdom like he meant it.”

“With mankind by our side?”

“Yes,” she nods, and a small smile colors her features. “It is the only way. They have the means to stop the demons, but we're the ones who stand between them and the angels.”

He lets the words sink in for long moments, staring down at her hand still positioned on his shoulder. When he looks at her again, she knows his answer, and he knows her thoughts, like they always have before. And then they both look out over the green pasture, watching how a group of children makes their way out onto the path, dragging their backpacks behind them, headed for a future that’s not altogether certain.

 

 

** \- fin - **

 


End file.
